Christmas 2010

Thanks to everyone for a great Christmas get together at Holland Park.

We had a great Christmas this year as we got to celebrate it twice. The first one was at home, we enjoyed a traditional Christmas dinner followed by attending the 8pm Christmas service at our local church.

This is the Our Lady of the Nativity Church at Lawson - our favourite Christmas service.

Then on Christmas Day, we packed the dogs into the car and set off for Guyra. The weather was fine and sunny at first then became overcast as we headed up the Putty Rd to Singleton but fortunately we didn't get any rain.

We stayed at the Guyra Motel for the night as they allow dogs. Being Christmas we wished that it would snow....

....but we'd have to go back in July to see it snow here as you can see in the photo above. Christmas in July - Guyra is the place to be.

We then celebrated Christmas and the New Year (bonus) in Brisbane with all the family.

Our poor Bacci got sick (probably too much Christmas) vomiting and diarrhea, so we couldn't travel until he recovered. Luckily for us, it gave us the chance to spend a few days touring around Brisbane with Celeste and Greg in Brisbane. We went to the wineries at Mt Tamborine one day...

Tamborine Mountain Distillery

Witches Falls Winery, Mt Tamborine

 O'Reily's Winery at Canungra below Mt Tamborine

 St Bernard's Hotel, a great place for lunch but we didn't eat here

 We had hamburgers and fish and chips for lunch, which we ate while enjoying views overlooking the lake at Cedar Creek wineries. We found that the restaurants on the mountain are very expensive, lunch averages $30 for a main course. The other thing we couldn't believe is that most of the wineries up here charge a fee for wine tasting averaging $5 per person for 5 tastings. Luckily for us, because it was Christmas and we bought a couple of wines, we got away with not paying at any of them.

While we ate our lunch we saw lots of these beautiful bearded dragons in the parkland around the lake.
We bought (actually James did) a couple of bottles of wines but on the whole, I didn't like any of the wines I tasted.



The next day we travelled north to Montville stopping at a winery first (of course). I like most of the wines and so we bought a few bottles. Their port was fantastic.

Malaney Winery

 Montville

Celeste & Greg at Montville

This is a sample of the flooding we encountered on the trip home via the New England Highway.

 Cunningham's Gap - gushing waterfall

Cunningham's Gap - road collapsing down the mountain

Cunningham's Gap - just passing the point where the downhill lane has now totally collapsed down the side of the mountain. We got through minutes before the road was totally closed.

The river around Tenterfield has burst its banks.

We stayed the night at Guyra, it was cloudy but no rain thank goodness. We headed off early Saturday morning arriving in Tamworth around 10am. It was cool and sunny and we stopped and had a cooked breakfast at the new service station on the southern outskirt of town - they do a great breakfast.

We had some sun on the trip home but there was a lot of cloud around especially towards the coast. We arrived home around 4pm. It was good to be home again especially as it was partly sunny and fine.

 Unpacking is always a bitch but we got through it quickly and was soon sitting down and relaxing for the evening. I think the dogs were happy to be back in their own yard once again.

Woke up Sunday morning to mist, rain and cool weather and it has been raining ever since, though only light compared to Qld. 

It was lucky for us that we left Brisbane when we did because a couple of days later and the floods hit Toowoomba, Warrick, Tenterfield and Brisbane. Our prayers go with all those people affected in the floods which are not only affecting three quarters of Qld but also Northern NSW and parts of Vic.

Cheers,

Marieanne